Home services
The emergency call that came in while every tech was on a roof.
In home services the phone is the dispatch system, and the person who would answer it is usually holding a wrench. The call you miss at 2pm on a Tuesday is not a lead, it is a job that went to whoever picked up.
Web chat, the channel shown here
Voice
SMS
Thornwick Dental
Front desk
Thornwick Dental, this is the front desk. What can I help you with?
The calls that go missing
The phone is the dispatch system, and nobody is holding it.
- A no-heat or no-water call while the whole crew is out and nobody is near a phone.
- A weekend caller who assumes you are closed and does not leave a message.
- A repeat customer calling about a warranty visit, who ends up on a competitor’s truck.
What your callers ask
What somebody standing over a leak asks.
These are the words people use on the phone, not a paraphrase of them. An agent that answers a paraphrase is answering somebody else’s call.
- Do you cover my area?
- How soon can somebody get out here?
- Is there a call-out fee just to look at it?
- My water heater is leaking, what do I do right now?
- Are you licensed and insured?
- Can you tell me roughly what this kind of job runs?
The first thing you will ask
It needs to know whether we cover a zip code, or it is useless.
Your service area is exactly the kind of thing the agent answers well, because it is a fact you already know and can write down once. It comes from your material, so it answers coverage, hours, licensing and what happens on a call-out from the same source your team uses. What it will not do is quote a job price over the phone, because you cannot price a job you have not seen and neither can it.
The demo answers for a dental practice, which is the same agent under the same rules. Ask it something it has no business knowing and watch where the call goes.
Back to the demoQuestions
What owners ask before it goes on the main line.
Can it dispatch a technician?
It does not touch your dispatch. It answers, it establishes what is wrong and where, and it gets that to whoever schedules, which on most days is the difference between a job and a voicemail.
What does it tell someone with an actual emergency?
It does not attempt to talk anyone through a repair. It gets the urgent details fast and escalates, and because it answers every call at once, a burst of three emergencies at 4pm does not become two missed ones.
Will it give a price over the phone?
No. It can state a call-out fee if you publish one, and beyond that it gets the details for a real quote. A number invented on a phone call is a number you have to argue your way out of on site.
Next
Use it, then bring us what it got wrong.
The most useful call we can have is with someone who has already found the edge of this thing in their own category.
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